Getting Pole Position the Hard Way
GETTING POLE POSITION THE HARD WAY
MAYBE I'LL JUST FIND a hot tub and relax," said a smiling Shinji Kazama as he stepped off the plane that brought him home to Tokyo's Narita International Airport. Who could blame him? Kazama had just ridden a motorcycle to the South Pole and back.
Kazama's mount for this lit tle jaunt was a Yamaha 0U70 Xito, a dual-purpose bike powered by a two-stroke 200cc Single. An experienced adven turer, Kazama chose the Xito for environmental considera tions. First, the bike's silencer limits exhaust noise to 70 decibels. And second, the si lencer incorporates a catalytic converter that minimizes ex haust pollution. Kazama fig ured low noise and low pollution were absolute re quirements for his trek into this most pristine of Earth's continents.
Kazama and his three-man, snowmobile-mounted support team arrived at Antarctica's Patriot Hills Base Camp De cember 1, 199 1, trained for a few days in the prevailing 9degree Fahrenheit tempera tures, and on December 8 began the first leg of the trip by heading for Hercules Inlet, 34 miles away.
Things went smoothly until December 14, when the team encountered a blizzard that whited them out and blocked them in for five days. The snow deposited by the blizzard greatly slowed the team's progress from the 60 miles per day it had been covering to a little more than 4 miles per day.
Problems extended to more than the difficulty of forward progress. The expedition car ried its fuel in drums, and midway to the pole, horrified team members discovered that one of those drums contained not gasoline, but kerosene.
This forced Kazama into something he hated. "As a fuel-conservation measure we sometimes had to load the bike onto the snowmobile. This ob viously wasn't the correct way to cover the distance, but you know, adventures should be a challenge, and this one was," he said.
Problems or no, the team fi nally reached the South Pole on January 3, 1992, covering 870 miles in 28 days.
I he return trip was unevent ful, but that relative lack of ex citement hasn't necessarily lulled Kazama into immediate plans for another such adven ture.
Instead, inspired by the raw, pristine beauty of Antarctica, he's thinking along environ mental lines, and plans to hold a party dubbed "Earth Energy Village."
But first, that visit to the hot tub.
Kazuyuki Kadota
